Alabama

Why the Outback Bowl Picked Auburn

There's been a bit of whining in the blogosphere about the Outback Bowl's all-but-official selection of Auburn for this year's bowl game. It's already been ably argued why, in a moral or deserving sense, Auburn is as good a selection as anybody else. Jerry Hinnen:

But to say that Auburn has somehow accomplished less than season than
the likes of the Vols because of a one-game difference in the
standings-when that difference can be chalked up almost entirely to
"playing Vandy" vs. "not playing Vandy"** and Auburn won
their big nonconference test-is flat ignorant. We shouldn't even be
talking "deserve," but if we are, OK: Auburn deserves it, as much as
anyone does.

So, that's that: Auburn is as deserving (or, to look at it from the other direction, as undeserving) as any of the other 7-5 SEC teams and probably 8-4 Ole Miss as well.

But why, then, did the Outback Bowl pick Auburn? They had, after all, six(ish) good options. Here are some possibilities, in order of likely importance:

1. Auburn will fill seats as good as anyone. This is the most important single thing that a bowl committee cares about. Not tradition, not how good a team actually is, not how deserving the fans are: it's putting behinds in seats.

Auburn will do that as well as anybody in the conference, and better than some. If the bowl game was at, say, the Texas Motor Speedway, and the Tigers had to sell a hundred thousand tickets for a game hundreds of miles away from their fan base, this might be a legitimate concern. But the 65,000-seat Raymond James Stadium that hosts the Outback Bowl will be no problem.

2. Auburn will draw viewers better than most. Auburn has an exciting offense and has played in exciting games. This is important, as the second most-important consideration for a bowl game is its television appeal. People, especially casual fans, like to watch good football games. Most of Auburn's game have been exciting, and the Tigers have a fun offense that people will want to watch.

If Auburn ends up playing Wisconsin, a boring team (no offense, Badgers fans), it's important to have that extra excitement. If, as there is apparently still a slight chance for, Auburn should draw Northwestern, then Outback Bowl officials can honestly claim to have the most exciting match-up in terms of pure offensive excitement.

3. The other possible selections have their own disadvantages. Who else was really in the running for the Outback Bowl? Assuming that the Cotton Bowl was/is definitely going to take Ole Miss, then the other likely possibilities were/are Tennessee, Georgia, and Arkansas.

Tennessee, apparently the most likely candidate three days ago, has been to the Outback Bowl a lot lately. The Vols didn't go bowling last year, but they did go to the Outback Bowl the two years before that, including a game against Wisconsin to finish the 2007 season. That's not a very exciting match-up. Plus, nobody wants their bowl game to be about "Lane Kiffin said what?!" even if Kiffin's gotten better about that sort of thing lately.

Auburn, on the other hand, hasn't been to the Outback Bowl since the 1995 season, so Tampa is still fresh for Auburn fans. And Gene Chizik and the rest of the Auburn coaching staff have been models of saying exactly the right thing since they were hired.

Arkansas has a very similar profile to Auburn (relatively successful rebuilding year, exciting offense) and won the head-to-head, but they're much farther away from Tampa, which will discourage a bowl committee concerned with how fans will travel. It seems like people on the Arkansas side would also rather stay closer to home, even if it means a less impressive bowl game.

As for Georgia, who has the same record but a more impressive schedule than Auburn, plus a head-to-head win over the Tigers, it's not difficult to imagine a bowl committee hesitating to take a team whose fan base, correctly, sees this season as a disaster. Georgia, after all, was a preseason top-15 team, and many observers (yours truly included) thought the Bulldogs could make some hay at the national level. Obviously, that didn't work out. Georgia fans see this as a down year, and that makes bowl committees wary of their commitment to traveling and spending money.

Does all of this make Auburn the right choice? I don't know. But looking at six 7-5 teams, each with its own flaws and disadvantages, I think the Outback Bowl committee made a reasonable decision and came to about the best possible choice.